


no side but our own

by essektheylyss (midnightindigo)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Empire Kids, Gen, I repeat: platonic, platonic friendship, ride or die friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-18 11:37:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21610285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightindigo/pseuds/essektheylyss
Summary: "It’s hard, he thinks, not to choose a side. It’s hard, she thinks, not to choose every side." Beau and Caleb know they're probably considered traitors to the Empire. Turning your back on your home isn't the problem. The problem is what happens when you've got nowhere else to run to.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 8
Kudos: 145





	no side but our own

**Author's Note:**

> True to form, I was thinking about hopelessness and friendship. They're antithetical, I think. 
> 
> Written while listening to Sleep On the Floor by the Lumineers. The warning is really just for a few instances of bad language.

It’s hard, he thinks, not to choose a side.

It’s hard, she thinks, not to choose every side. 

It’s weeks of leaning on one another’s shoulders for support—physical or mental. It’s months of watching each other’s skin stitch back together with every healing spell and potion, being felled in battle again and again and then revived to keep up the fight. It’s every door slammed in their faces, every entry denied, every fight for their dignity and the scraps of respect they’ve managed to gain, their fingernails scraping against cold, rough-hewn stone as they crawl for what little they’ve won for themselves.

And it’s every shared, silent watch, even in the safety of their bubble, knowing how many people they themselves have turned their backs on unsatisfied, knowing how many knives would love to find themselves buried in their spines. 

It is only when Beauregard has fallen asleep on his arm in the library of the Cobalt Soul, Frumpkin purring against the top of her head, one hand resting on the cat’s back, fingers entwined in the fur, that Caleb’s eyes fritz out of focus on the words of the seventeenth book he’s scoured for information, on time and transformation and the pits of Tartarus, for anything that might help them in their many, many quests, in everything they’re running from and running toward. 

There is so much running, he thinks, and this is perhaps the first time they’ve stopped to rest in months, one fight after another. Even here he can’t pretend he’s safe, can’t pretend any of them are safe, he and Beauregard in the library and the rest of the Mighty Nein back at their hiding place below the Evening Nip. The Cobalt Soul has been breached once before and the agents of the Chained Oblivion have followed them wherever they’ve stepped, and he’s so, so tired of running.

At least Beau can get some sleep here, safe enough among her fellows, and he wonders why she continues onward with them when she has this as another option, but as his unfocused eyes find the words on the page again, he knows why she can’t return here alone. It’s not her side, not really—there is only one side, and it is theirs. Theirs and the rest of civilization, and it’s so hard to choose who to protect when the only thing they know for certain is that if they do nothing, if they rest, there will be nothing left to protect.

It is a fearsome thing, to be alone on the edge of oblivion, a precipice above the abyss. He hasn’t felt quite human in some time, not since before the asylum and the fire and the academy, but he finds himself fighting for his humanity now, for his and Beau’s, and for the existence of every one of his friends.

There would not be any need to resist the pull of the pit were it not for each other. He already knows he’d have long since succumbed to insanity on his own. Because it is a fearsome thing, to be alone up there, to see the fall before you and the madness within. But he is not alone. They are not alone. 

She is not completely asleep, he realizes, as her other hand, the one that isn’t tangled in matted cat’s fur, fumbles with something small, and he sees the flash of silver and the symbol that he’s come to know well, and he hisses, as low as he can manage, picking up his book again and shifting his shoulders to shunt her weight off of his scarred, dirt-ridden, bandaged forearm, “Put that away.”

He hopes he’s captured the menace that he intended, but she’s never been one to respond to menace with anything but a challenge, particularly not when it’s him. “Whatcha gonna do about it if I don’t?” she asks, and he purses his lips in annoyance. Frumpkin, responding to his mental state, bristles, fur standing on end, and a slight hiss causes Beau to withdraw her hand.

“Fine, take his side,” she mumbles, and there isn’t quite as much venom as he’s used to in the retort; the exhaustion that he can’t see on her face comes through in her voice. He thinks it’s mighty rich of her to claim sides now. “We’re traitors to the Empire, and we’re double agents in the Dynasty. One day or another, we’re gonna get fucked somewhere.”

“I’d rather that day not be today.” This isn’t the time or place for this conversation, in the quiet halls of the archives, but no one is around, and she’s speaking almost too low for him to hear, but even still, he wishes momentarily that Fjord was around to check on any unseen listeners.

Not that the Empire knows where to look for them, and the Dynasty knows what they are—for the most part. Throughout all of their time in Xhorhas, probably being scried on from the beginning, they were never executed for their crimes. The Kryn are an odd sort, compared to the Empire, but perhaps they tolerate more disagreement knowing that they must live with each other for far longer than humans can imagine. 

Still, he can’t imagine that Leylas Kryn takes kindly to talk of treason, but no one among them has ever suggested anything close to treason. Questioning the motives of the government should not be a crime, for all he worries it could be no matter which border they’ve crossed. 

“What do you think will become of this war if the Chained Oblivion is stopped?” He isn’t even sure he’s actually spoken the words when Beau sits up again, lines imprinted across her cheek from where she rest on the bandages on his arms. “Is there… is there hope the war might end?”

“Not without that beacon,” she says, still fidgeting with the symbol of the Bright Queen in her lap. “And not if the Cerberus Assembly has an ulterior motive to the war. We don’t have a clue what that might be, what kind of horrible things they might be looking for in Xhorhas.”

It’s the answer he worries about at night, whether he’s awake on watch or alone in the dark with his friends and compatriots sprawled around him, limbs tangled together from tossing and turning in their sleep, each twisted by their own personal demons and nightmares. 

The bubble he can create has kept out ancient dragons and prying magical eyes, and yet the one thing he wishes it would repel were the things that haunt the Nein at night. 

“We may avert the end of the world, the end of everything, and nothing will change,” he exhales, the words catching on his gritted teeth. It is incomprehensible to imagine that the Bright Queen or King Dwendal might maintain their politicking war beyond the end of the world, and yet he has spent time in politics. He knows how these things work, to an extent. 

It doesn’t make it any less despicable to think about. But both of them have lived for too long in the Empire to know that this conflict will not die quietly, and it will not die with a bang. It has been too long coming to grind so immediately to a halt. 

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, but some divides are too wide to bridge for long.

“If we can…” Even saying it out loud feels impossible, but he has to believe it’s possible, or he will succumb to hopelessness, and he and his friends will be doomed anyway. “If we can contain the Chained Oblivion, and this war does not end, what shall we do then?”

The medallion disappears inside her clenched fist, and he watches a dozen thoughts flit by on her face. She’s always been good at deceiving others, but so has he, and they can read each other like the books in this library when they want to. The others are harder, but both of them grew up around humans and emotion does not always come across quite the same on other faces.

“Heads for smuggling, tails for piracy,” she says, and in a brazen act of defiance—against the Empire, against Xhorhas, against every force that has welcomed them with contingencies and rejected them with less—she tosses the coin into the air in the middle of the archive, and it flips, side over side, before she catches it in her palm and slaps it onto her wrist. 

“Aren’t they the same thing?” he asks, flabbergasted and glancing around to see who might be looking. 

But they’re on their own, aren’t they? They’ve always been on their own, and at that speed the symbol of the Bright Queen looks only like a common silver piece. 

“Land crime or sea crime.” Her smiles twists, and he recognizes that she’s doing this to taunt and tease him, as though they’ve not committed enough petty offenses to put any one of them away for a lifetime—probably in any nation they might find themselves.

She flips her hand, and it reveals the smooth backside of the coin, the Bright Queen’s symbol hidden against her dark skin. His thoughts come back to him as he processes her two options. “Oh, the Revelry will not take kindly to that.”

Beau barks out a laugh, twisting the coin away in her slender fingers and squirreling it back into her pocket, and it’s loud enough to earn several offended shushes from various tables deeper into the archive. He can’t help but laugh with her as she snickers lower beneath her breath, and she tosses an arm around his shoulders. Her muscled weight is a comfort, a reminder that he is here, and he is not alone.

It would take more than the gods can summon against them to tear the Mighty Nein apart—and they already have several gods on their side. 

Their side. It is the only side there is. 

“Piracy it is then,” he says, and her mirth lights her face.

“I thought it suited us the first time,” she says. “Captain Tusktooth and his merry band of pirates. Maybe you can get a tattoo from Orly too. Fire resistance?” Her eyes flit to his dirty bandages, the char marks on the fabric that wraps up into his palms, still clasping the edges of the book in his hands, and though her face sobers slightly, the reminder of the flames is not so painful now, not when she is here to carry him out of them.

“I think tattoos are far better suited to you,” he smiles. “Perhaps Jester will give you another. One to commemorate our captain.”

“I’ll get it right on my ass,” she retorts, and his smile widens imagining what horrified expression Fjord might wear if he could hear them now.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
